AARON- -a Type of Christ.

I. Aaron, a teacher, or the mountain of fortitude; so is Christ the true teacher of God's Word.

II. Aaron was Moses's mouth to the people; so is Christ His Father's mouth to men, declaring His will and mind to them.

III. Aaron was the blesser of the people (Lev. ix, 22); so is Christ the true blesser of His people (Acts iv, 27).

IV. Aaron was the high priest of the Lord; Jesus Christ is the only true High Priest of the Church.

V. Aaron died upon the mount; Christ was crucified on Mount Calvary. B. Keach.

so strong in the life that is hid with Christ of our fleshly appetites we do not breathe in God; for in the exercise and indulgence deeply enough to inspire the holy element and holy spirit-breathing was suspended of our risen Prince. Finding that deep during bodily enjoyments, godly souls have often interdicted the gratifications of the flesh, in order to help their spirits in the J. Pulsford.

God-ward direction.
ACT-Influence of a Right.

A right act strikes a chord that extends through the whole universe, touches all brates along its whole extent, and conveys moral intelligence, visits every world, viits vibrations to the very bosom of God! Pray learn to understand how all work has in it a spiritual element; how the side; how all temporary forms include meanest thing on earth has a divine be the meanness of a man's occupation, he essences that are to be eternal. Whatever may discharge and prosecute it on principles common to him with Michael or heaven. Gabriel, or any of the highest spirits of T. Binney.

intended to contribute to the sum of felicity man is fitted to enjoy. No chord must be untouched; each must send forth some vibration to make the harmony complete. Dr. Thomas.

ACTION-Man made for.

Action is at once the destiny and the lot of man. All the conditions of his existence are framed upon the supposition of his activity. It is so in man's physical frame. The elastic foot is for speed; the firm lithe limb for endurance; the arm, at once supple and sinewy, for toil; the eye and the ear are for their respective revelries in sight and sound. It is so in our mental constitution. By the active exercise of the powers which God has given us we classify objects and understand truths: we discriminate, we invent, we analyse, we compare, we combine. We have a memory that can inherit the past; we have a regal imagination which can colonise, and almost enact, the future. It is so in our moral nature. The power by which we distinguish between right and wrong; an instinct of worship, which, however we may brutalise, we cannot wholly stifle; yearnings after a nobler life, which no debauchery can extinguish nor murder absolutely kill these are all implanted within us by the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Alike, then, in the realm of hand, and brain, and heart, God has made the health and vigour of the faculties contingent upon their exercise, stamping activity as an irreversible law on man. The muscle will shrink if it be not strung; the moveless arm will stiffen into hopeless catalepsy; the athlete worsted in the Olympian games, at least gets strength for life. Every faculty will attenuate if it be not exerted. The moral nature will grow weak if it be not roused to resistance; feeble in its faith unless it be constantly exercised; languid and hopeless in its struggle against evil if the conscience do only indolently strive against the incursions and aggressions of sin. Man was not made to live merely for the possible reception of external impressions, a harp upon which every fitful wind might blow; he was made to act, to will, to influence, to become a power, and the living centre of ever radiating impressions. It were strange, indeed, if in a laborious universe man should be the only idler among the works of the Creator's hands. While all around are working, from the wavelet's tiniest ripple and from the rosebud's heart, ever glowing into deeper crimson, to the tireless ocean and the menial and monarch sun; whilst unwearied labour was the condition of Paradise, and angels cease not in their ministry, and there is no faltering in the march of the heavens, and the Son went about doing good, and the Eternal Father,

the watchman of Israel, neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, you will not wonder that, by a law as benign as it is authoritative, God has impressed activity upon his favorite creature, man, and has provided that his shall not be a zoophite existence, clinging in blind helplessness as a parasite to its guardian rock, but a life beautiful and holy, a life of quickened pulses, and an activity and an energy of which insensate matter knows not; and finding, in the rapturous doing of everyday life, its very soul and essence of joy. There is a necessity in man, then, for activity. Act he must and will, and it is the province of religion to direct and control this tendency, so that his doing may be according to that which is right. W. M. Punshon.

ACTION-Patience in.
Let us then be up and doing,

With a heart for every fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,

Learn to labour and to wait. Longfellow.

ACTIONS-Continuance of.

The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfor tune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world. Our actions must clothe us with an im. mortality loathsome or glorious; these are the only title-deeds of which we cannot be disinherited; they will have their full weight in the balance of eternity, when everything else is as nothing; and their value will be confirmed and established by those two sure and sateless destroyers of all other earthly things-Time and Death. C. Colton. ACTIONS OF INTELLECT-based on Feelings.

ACTIONS Good and Evil.

To do an evil action is base; to do a good action, without incurring danger, is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though be risks everything.

Plutarch.

ACTIONS (Trifling)-Importance of.

The most trifling actions that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or nine at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it before he can receive it in a lump. B. Franklin.

ACTIONS-Interpreted.

There is no word or action but may be taken with two hands; either with the right hand of charitable construction, or the sinister interpretation of malice and suspicion and all things do succeed as they are taken. To construe an evil action well, is but a pleasing and profitable deceit to myself; but to misconstrue a good thing is a treble wrong-to myself, the action, and the author. Bp. Hall. ACTIVITIES-in Life's Calling.

The Jews compared a man with a fixed employment to "a vineyard fenced." A good comparison. A man's activities, within his proper calling, are not like trees scattered up and down the wayside, or over the wilderness, when much of the fruit is lost; but like well-planted and well-trained vines in a garden, where the most is made of them, and they are all husbanded and preserved. J. Stoughton.

ACTIVITY-Achievements of.

Dr. Adam Clarke said that "the old proverb about having too many irons in the fire, was an abominable old lie. Have all in it-shovel, tongs, and poker." Wesley said, "I am always in haste, but never in a hurry; leisure and I have long taken leave of each other." He travelled about five thousand miles in a year; preached about three times a day, commencing at five o'clock in the morning; and his published works amounted to about two hundred volumes. Asbury travelled six thousand miles a year, and preached in. cessantly. Coke crossed the Atlantic eighteen times, preached, wrote, travelled, established missions, begged from door to door for them, and laboured in all respects as if, like the apostles, he would "turn the world upside down." At nearly seventy years of age he starts to Christianise India. Dr. Stevens.

ACTIVITY-Achievements of.

Francis Asbury was the pioneer bishop of the Methodist Church in America. Always and everywhere, with harness on ready for spiritual warfare, he may be said almost to have created the Church in its present form, and during his long and active life kept all its departments in motion. He ordained upward of three thousand preachers, and preached seventeen thousand sermons, besides attending to the varied and multitudinous duties connected with his peculiar relation to the Church and his episcopal office.

Dr. Strickland,

ACTIVITY-Benefit of.

As animal power is exhausted exactly in proportion to the time during which it is acting, as well as in proportion to the intensity of force exerted, there may often be a great saving of it by doing work quickly, although with a little more exertion during the time. Suppose two men of equal weight to ascend the same stair, one of whom takes only a minute to reach the top, and the other takes four minutes, it will cost the first little more than a fourth part of the fatigue which it costs the second, because the exhaustion is in proportion to the time during which the muscles are acting. The quick mover may have exerted perhaps one twentieth more force in the first instant to give his body the greater velocity, which was afterwards continued, but the slow supported his load four times as long. ACTIVITY-Christian.

Dr. Arnott.

The more excellent anything is, the more active. The sun is a glorious creation, it is ever in motion, going its circuit: fire is the purest element, and the most active, it is ever sparkling and flaming: the angels are the most noble creatures, they are represented by the cherubims, with wings displayed. The more active for heaven, the more illustrious, and the more do we resemble the angels. T. Watson.

ACTIVITY-Comfort in Christian.

Wouldst thou from sorrow find a sweet relief?

Or is thy heart oppress'd with woes untold?

Balm wouldst thou gather for corroding grief?

Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold :

"Tis when the rose is wrapped in many a fold

Close to its heart, the worm is wasting there

Its life and beauty! not when, unroll'd,

Leaf after leaf, its bosom, rich and fair, Breathes freely its perfumes throughout the ambient air. W. Wilcox.

ACTIVITY-Importance of.

It is good policy to strike while the iron is hot: it is still better to adopt Cromwell's procedure, and make the iron hot by striking. The master-spirit who can rule the storm is great, but he is much greater who can both raise and rule it. To attain that grand power, one must possess the brave and indomitable soul of activity which prompted Edmund Burke to exclaim to his constituents in his famous speech at Bristol, "Applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on-for God's sake let us pass on." E. L. Magoon. ACTIVITY-Incitement to.

Wake thou that sleepest in enchanted

bowers,

Lest these lost years should haunt thee on the night When death is waiting for thy numbered hours

To take their swift and everlasting flight;

Wake, ere the earth-born charm unnerve thee quite, And be thy thoughts to work Divine ad

dress'd.

Do something-do it soon-with all thy might,

An angel's wing would droop if long at rest, And God Himself, inactive, were no longer blest.

"Tis infamy to die and not be miss'd,

Or let all soon forget that thou didst e'er exist!

Rouse to some work of high and holy love, And thou an angel's happiness shalt know,Shalt bless the earth while in the world above;

The good begun by thee shall onward flow

In many a branching stream, and wider grow;

The seed that, in these few and fleeting hours, Thy hands unsparing and unwearied

SOW,

Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers,

And yield thee fruits Divine in heaven's immortal bowers! W. Wilcox. ACTIVITY-Literary.

You must act: inactive contemplation is a dangerous condition for minds of profound moral sensibility. We are not to dreain away our lives in the contemplation of distant or imaginary perfection. We

are to act in an imperfect and corrupt world; and we must only contemplate perfection enough to ennoble our natures, but not to make us dissatisfied and disgusted with these faint approaches to that perfection, which it would be the nature of a brute or a demon to despise. It is for this reason that I exhort you to literary activity. It is not as the road of ambition, but of duty, and as the means of usefulness and the resource against disease. It is an exercise necessary to your own health, and by which you directly serve others. Sir J. Mackintosh.

ACTIVITY-Soul.

There is a fire-fly in the southern clime
Which shineth only when upon the wing;
So is it with the mind: when once we rest,
We darken. On! said God unto the soul,
As to the earth, for ever. On it goes,
A rejoicing native of the infinite-

As a bird of air-an orb of heaven. Anon.

ACTS-Influence of.

Think how our acts will influence others. Augustine of Canterbury remained seated That archiepiscopal etiquette caused them when the clergy of Britain approached. to resist him as proud, and thus a matter so small as keeping a seat kept two feud. The right or wrong of an immortal churches apart, and perpetuated disastrous spirit often depends upon impressions made by our conduct; and that at times when we least expect observance, and when the matters we are about seem to us of the most trivial import. S. Coley.

ACTS-Unselfish.

Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls. When wrought in earliest youth, they lie in the memory of age like the coral islands, green and sunny, amidst the melancholy waste of ocean. Dr. Thomas.

ADAM-a Type of Christ.

I. Adam had no father but God; so Christ likewise had no father but God. They were both in an especial manner called the sons of God; the one by creation, the other by an eternal generation.

II. Adam was made heir of the world; Christ is heir of all things, not only of this world, but of that which is to come. III. Adam was a common or public person, representing all his seed or natural offspring; hence his sin is charged upon all his posterity (Rom. v, 12, 14). Christ, the second Adam, is a common public person, representing all His true seed or spiritual offspring; so that as Adam's sin was imputed to all his children, so is Christ's righteousness imputed to all His childreu through faith (Rom. v, 19). The first Adam merited death for his

seed; the second Adam merited life for His seed. B. Keach.

ADAPTATION-in Nature.

The bodies of animals hold in their constitution and properties a great and important relation to the elements by which they are surrounded. The wings of birds bear a relation to air, and the fins of fishes

to water.

Throughout the universe there is a wonderful proportioning of one thing to another. The size of animals, of man especially, when considered with respect to other animals, or to the plants which grow around him, is such as a regard to his conveniency would have pointed out. A giant or a pigmy could not have milked goats, reaped corn, or mowed grass; a giant could

not have rode a horse, trained a vine, or shorn a sheep, with the same bodily ease as we do, if at all. A pigmy would have been lost amongst rushes, or carried off by birds of prey.

It may be observed, likewise, that the

model and the materials of the human body being what they are, a much greater bulk would have broken down by its own weight. The persons of men who much exceed the ordinary stature betray this tendency.

How close is the suitableness of the

earth and sea to their several inhabitants, and of these inhabitants to the places of their appointed residence!

Take the earth as it is; and consider the correspondency of the powers of its inhabitants with the properties and condition of the soil which they tread. Take the inhabitants as they are; and consider the substances which the earth yields for their use. They can open its surface; and its surface supplies all which they want. Such is the length of their faculties, and such the constitution of the globe, that

this is sufficient for all their occasions.

When we pass from the earth to the sea, from land to water, we pass through a great change; but an adequate change accompanies us of animal forms and functions, of animal capacities and wants. The earth in its nature is very different from the sea, and the sea from the earth; but one accords with its inhabitants as exactly as the other; and the correspondency instituted by Divine Wisdom pervades and harmonises the whole. Archdeacon Paley. ADOPTION-Assurance of.

in the knowledge that he is included in the will of the father. Even so, he who was once alienated from God, but now adopted, has the assurance of his adoption, in the Spirit sent into his heart; in the smiles of God resting upon him; in the righteousness of Christ which clothes him; in the provision of grace which he enjoys, in the protection of grace, in the love of the brethren, in the knowledge of his Father's will. John Bate.

A person who was an alien, when taken into the family of a citizen and recognised as a child, receives the assurance of his sonship in the smiles, favours, protection, and name of the father; in the apparel given him to wear; in the affection, kindness, and union of the members of the family;

ADOPTION-Civil and Sacred.

is a twofold agreement and disagreement. Betwixt civil and sacred adoption there They agree in this, that both flow from the pleasure and good will of the adoptant; and in this, that both confer a right to privileges which we have not by nature; but in this they differ: one is an act imithe one was found out for the comfort of tating nature, the other transcends nature: them that had no children, the other for

the comfort of them that had no Father.

Divine adoption is in Scripture either God by which we are made sons, or for the taken properly for that act or sentence of vested. We lost our inheritance by the fall privileges with which the adopted are inof Adam; we receive it by the death of Christ, which restores it again to us by a

new and better title.

J. Flavel.

ADOPTION-Definitions of.

Adoption is that act of God by which we who were alienated, and enemies, and dis. inherited, are made the sons of God, and heirs of His eternal glory.

R. Watson.

Adoption is an action whereby a man takes a person into his family, in order to make him part of it, acknowledges him for his son, and receives him into the number, and gives him a right to the privileges of his children. Pharaoh's daughter adopted young Moses, and Mordecai Esther, Ex. ii, 10; Esther ii, 7, 15. A. Cruden.

ADOPTION—Gain of.

By adoption God gives us-1, a new nature (2 Pet. i, 3); 2, a new name (Rev. iii, 12); 3, a new inheritance (Rom. viii, 17); 4, new relations (Rom. viii, 15, 16); 5, a new hope (1 Pet. i, 3). John Bate.

ADOPTION-Honour of.

How high is this dignity! To be called the sons of God! this is our prerogative royal. We tell you not of a kindred imperial, adopted into some of the Cæsar's families; nor of David matching into the house of Saul, which seemed to him no small preferment; we blazon not your arms with the mixture of noble ingressions, nor fetch your lineal descents from heroes and